Sleeping Beauty
by Tabi
Summary: Yaoi. YoshikunixTakumu. All good things must come to an end, so Yoshikuni painfully discovers after Takumu decides to end their relationship. However, either Takumu saw fit to ignore or was plainly unaware of the strength of Yoshikuni's admiration...


~Sleeping Beauty~

I remember the first time I gave you sleeping pills.

It was near the end of the spring term, wasn't it? Everybody in the school was starting to... slow down somewhat, I suppose. Spend their time in classes looking out of the window and contemplating the oncoming change of seasons. The chill of winter had fallen out of the air and the sun was beginning to shine more... people were starting to go outside at breaks and lunchtimes more often now. Sometimes snow still visited us, but it was becoming rarer with each passing day and the weather reports began to tell only of long sunny days with no interruption from snow or rain or clouds... we would be allowed to wear the summer uniform after the break. People were beginning to get lax with their winter uniforms as it was - people walked around with their blazers undone, with their ties off, with their shirts unbuttoned... I made a point of firming the rules in the minds of those who would disobey them, but the season was changing and nobody seemed to care. Even the head of the Student Council is powerless against the change of the seasons.

The idea of the Student Council was to set an example for the rest of the school. Therefore, my word had little effect on them when _you_ went around so casually, when Kudou and Moritaka were also... I asked Katsuragi once what he thought of the matter. He said little, only agreeing with me. That was enough for me, but not enough of an example for the rank and file of Seirei Gakuen... by the last days of that week before, I gave up trying to enforce the rules. This came with difficulty, but like in many areas of my life, I was starting to see the effort wasted.

I remember one time, I'd been talking to two first-year students, lecturing them on their attire. Kudou had been watching me and had laughed at me when we'd returned to the council building afterwards. He didn't understand why I had to be so heavy-handed and he didn't understand why I had to be so determined in enforcing the rules, especially not at _this_ time of year... I hadn't been able to say anything to him and he hadn't really been listening in the first place. He didn't really want to know why I had to be, he only found amusement in the fact that I _was_. He left my company to pursue amusement with Moritaka and I didn't try to stop him; I returned to the council building and you were in there. You asked me if I was alright. You only meant it as way of greeting but I didn't see your question fit to grace with an answer... was I alright? I wondered how you dared ask such a question. How could you ask me that, Takumu?!... Surely you would know the answer to that more than anybody else. If Kudou had seriously wanted to know the reason why I seemed to cling so pointlessly to the smallprint of Seirei's guidelines, he could have followed me into the meeting room and seen the answer stand before him as it did myself.

You showed me the transient nature of affection, Takumu. You granted me feeling only to steal it away before I could notice, you allowed me to nestle in comfort before renouncing all we had shared.

Nobody else knew. At the time, you hadn't wanted anybody else to know. Hadn't wanted any kind of rumour to overtake the school, hadn't want gossip spread from class to class on what those two from the Student Council were _doing_ behind the closed (and locked) doors of the council building... and I accepted because it was you. Because it was a matter you were so firm on, because I had no reason to refuse. You had a career you didn't want spoilt through the power of malicious curiosity... I had you and didn't want you spoilt either. It was alright for as long as it was the two of us, as long as we had each other we didn't _need_ anybody else... I was naive, I hadn't even considered how dangerous it was until suddenly you were no longer mine. I didn't understand. You wouldn't discuss it. Saying only that you thought that I was becoming too dependent on you and that you didn't feel you had the strength to support me... saying that you didn't think the things I said to you were healthy. That you didn't want such an intense relationship. That you thought it would be better for me if I had my space.

I always had my space, Takumu. You were the only one I ever let invade it, and with good reason... you _knew_ me, Takumu. You knew the front I presented to the rest of the school, knew the things I thought about... knew of the loneliness I spoke of, the sadness that you vanquished... I remember you told me at the beginning, you told me that you didn't want me to be lonely anymore. At that time, you didn't think it was healthy that I spent so much time on my own... you volunteered yourself to coax me out, to break the shell and peel back the layers in a way that I trusted only _you_ to do so. We went places. We did things. Nothing of any consequence but every experience warmed my heart and attached me to you. I admired you. I trusted you. I loved you. You turned and smiled at me and said that you loved me too... and that confused me, I didn't understand what you meant or how you meant it, I'd never considered the reality of such mutual feelings and yet there you were presenting them to me. You took my hand and I was shaking but you didn't give me the chance to argue and you wouldn't have _let_ me refuse. You were strong, Takumu. People saw me as the pillar of strength for the school and the council but it was you that I relied on, it was from you that I got my strength. I didn't think that you minded. You said that you wanted me to be happier. You made me happy. When you'd taken my hand, I assumed that, with everything you wanted to do, you accepted that I needed you. Nothing in your manner ever said that you didn't... until you decided that it wasn't convenient for you. As much as I hadn't understood it when you'd said you loved me, I understood it even less when it suddenly seemed that you didn't any longer.

Had any of that been a lie, Takumu? You never told me that you didn't love me... only that you didn't think that my behaviour was healthy. You'd said that you'd loved me... even if I was flawed, that was still _me_, wasn't it...? You should have guided me through that as much as you'd guided me through everything else...! You taught me to relax, taught me to open up... you taught me to be able to hold your hand without shaking, taught me to look you in the eye without wishing to look away. You taught me that it was alright to be nervous sometimes. You taught me to trust you. You taught me so _much_, Takumu... yet through all that you taught me, you never once told me what to do in the face of your rejection.

I'd had visions of us after Seirei... graduation would be both happy and sad and yet we would go forward... you and I together, we would have no hesitation. Even across continents, we would wait... just the knowledge that you existed on the same planet as me would have satisfied me. Even if we could only see each other rarely... absence makes the heart grow fonder, Takumu. We'd relish the fleeting intensity of the passing moment, living in anticipation for our next treasured meeting... we would live for ourselves and we'd live for each other and then with a few harsh words, you cut that short. The future no longer had you in it and the past hurt to be recalled. The present became only something which I existed in, seemingly without meaning. You sat across from me in our council meetings... we'd sit so close in physical proximity but suddenly you were so far away. I didn't understand you. I didn't understand what kind of impulse had forced you away from me. I didn't understand. I didn't _understand_ and I couldn't _ask_ you...! You said it was for the best. Whose best?

I'd see visions of us together and I'd feel pain for the fallacy I now knew it to be. I'd see you laughing with Moritaka and I would wonder.

We knew each other so keenly, didn't we? I let you know everything. You baited me softly and nurtured me until I couldn't even feel hesitation for talking to you. My fears and worries, they became lighter for being shared with you. I _told_ you. You _knew_. You shared yourself with me also... told me things you said you'd never told anybody else, things you said you were _scared_ in case people found out... and I held you as you spoke and felt my heart swell for being trusted. I trusted you and you trusted me too. I loved you, and you loved me also. The intensity of my feelings scared me but in such a wonderful way... I couldn't believe that I could feel such things and yet how could I doubt them? When I held you in my arms, you felt so real to me. You let me fall asleep in your arms, I felt so _safe_... and for me who had barely ever considered the real-life application of a relationship to my life, thoughts of a _sexual_ relationship... in any other circumstance, I would likely have deemed myself not ready for such things. I hadn't felt the need to think forward in such a manner, yet then... then somehow... you and I...

It felt like a regression back to the beginning. I felt nervous even when you held my hand, I tensed and trembled at every touch... your body was pressed against mine when you kissed me, and you held me so as not to scare me. I felt foolish for overreacting so terribly, but your eyes were kind and you didn't mind. You said that you understood. I wasn't sure what it was within me so how _you_ understood, I wonder... and I was still scared for as much as you'd taught me, for as much as I'd learnt, this was all so terribly alien to me. You had to remind me to breathe. You'd taken my glasses off and you were blurry, but then you leant close and I could _see_ you... and at the time, I seem to remember thinking that, if we did _that_, then that would be it. I wouldn't be able to be anything other than yours.

Like that, you became my treasure. We attended school and took care of our responsibilities, but nobody saw you like how I did. You smiled at the girls of Seirei who'd fawn themselves over you but you never held any of them in the way that you held me. You chatted with Kudou and smiled at Moritaka but you were separate from them and you were _mine_. You were blanketed by my feelings that said only '_I am yours_'. This separated you from them and brought you closer to me... I was yours. I worried to consider the thought that you could ever belong to me, but the further we went and the deeper I fell, I thought that nothing could be closer to the truth. You were mine? Everything had always been so similar. I loved you, you loved me. I trusted you, you trusted me. I offered myself to you entirely, you accepted that and took me completely. Surely if everything of me belonged to you, then such a thing couldn't _help_ but be mirrored...?

I grew to adore every part of you. I became used to your body and yet I was constantly fascinated by it. I could grow used to your body against mine but I could never grow tired of it, could never get bored with it. Your body was the thing that represented _you_ and I was held in constant awe... we would lie together and I would hold your hand. I would push my fingers between yours and watch how they fell, I would press them gently and watch them bend. You only smiled at me, didn't question those things that I did. I wanted to know you all over, I wanted to map your body in my mind and be able to trace it with my fingers... when I couldn't be with you, I wanted to remember you. I studied you so intently and you never minded. I wondered if you viewed my body as I viewed yours... you were a thing of beauty and I couldn't escape that, I couldn't look at you without feeling captured by you. Then you'd smile at me and I knew that if this was being captured, I never wanted to be freed.

Those memories seemed strange as I stood in the meeting room. You'd gone and I was left standing there, trying to come to terms with the fact that you'd let me go. If I was captured by anything further, it was only by my own feeling... no memory seemed enough to match the reality of your skin beneath my fingers. I'd remembered your body in such detail and yet the visions in my mind were a pale copy of what it was like for you to be _there_... I watched you around school and you were still separated only now separated by a barrier even I couldn't penetrate. I hadn't known you wished to reject me. That was something you didn't trust me with, something I hadn't known, that I honestly hadn't been able to predict... it made me question how well I'd known you, how much you'd _really_ told me. I didn't understand it. I couldn't understand it. Yours was the body that had held me close and calmed my nerves, yours was the body that had scared and thrilled me both at once... yours was the body that had moved me to such depths that I felt I couldn't and didn't _want_ to understand anything in this world other than you or I... I'd failed to realise how far I saw you as an extension of my own self until suddenly I was left without you.

Kudou wondered why I seemed so picky over the school rules? There was nothing else to think about. Pedantic I may have been but the thoughts provided a momentary respite from those of _you_. But of course, he never knew. None of them ever knew. Such a silence seemed to choke and deafen me... I didn't know what to do without you. I needed help, I needed guidance... all of that would have come from you, and now you were the one person I _couldn't_ talk to. The one person I'd trusted everything to. What did you feel about this? I didn't know. You seemed happy enough with Kudou and Moritaka and whoever else I saw you with... I hated them for being able to spend time with you. For being so free and easy. For being able to do all of those things that I hadn't known how to do, that I no longer knew how to do... you'd taught me, Takumu. As soon as you were gone, that knowledge went also.

I didn't stop watching you. I couldn't get used to the separation, I suppose... having been so close, being so suddenly apart... having to be together through every day of school, having no valid excuse to throw you from the council as I wished to do, I could only endure. You'd ask me things, feigning concern on my part... I never answered you. Of course I wasn't alright. How could I be with you asking me such a thing? Every time I looked at you, I'd remember something different. Even when you weren't there, I'd remember things about you and feel pained that they hadn't carried through to the present moment. Anything. The way it'd felt when you held my hand tightly. The strange way I'd felt naked when I was on top of you... somehow I didn't feel so when you were around me. The way I could feel vulnerable even when you held me. The way you cried out. The things you _knew_ could make me gasp. Those times when you were so far gone that you couldn't even speak... so gone as to only make rough sounds with each movement and you never knew how far those sounds moved me. Knowing you were that far gone. Knowing I'd made you like that. Hearing you admit afterwards that yes, it'd been _me_. Knowing I could move you so far. Being in thrall of how you moved me. All these things would rush into my mind and go as soon as existing for just having to look at you during a meeting, for having to talk to you to discuss something ordinary. I'd had my days where I couldn't look at you without wanting you and these days did not stop for you no longer letting me be yours.

The sun had shone through the open windows of the front sitting room as you'd walked in. You saw me there and immediately stiffened - had I disturbed something? I'd been relaxing against the sofa, staring out of the window. I found it interesting how we could have them open now and feel no difference for it... the day was calm, not even a gentle breeze to stir the leaves of the trees outside. Sometimes we would open the windows to feel the breeze but today, even that wasn't possible. No, Takumu... you didn't disturb anything. I'd asked how you were. You said little, but you seemed to be alright. That day had been fairly busy, hadn't it? Kudou had some kind of martial arts event going on... Moritaka had gone to cheer him on... even Katsuragi wasn't around, for reasons I cannot recall. The important thing was, for that afternoon, it was only our shared presence that disturbed the silence of the building. I had no lessons and I knew that you had none either... we had memorized each other's timetable. I didn't know if you remembered mine, but I certainly remembered yours... I still had your schedule written up and stuck to my bedroom wall. I'd meant to take it down, but somehow just hadn't got around to it... you'd sat yourself down on the comfortable chair opposite the sofa. I'd sat up when you'd walked in and when you sat down, I stood up. I asked if you wanted a cup of tea. You considered this; you seemed to see no harm from such a simple offer, as well as you might have done for having known me so well. I'd smiled at you. You should have suspected me then, Takumu. You knew me. You _knew_ me. Nothing about me had changed. You should have _known_.

I watched you intently as you drank the tea. You did so easily enough... you seemed to detect no foreign taste behind the sugar or the tea itself... you only spoke casually on how exhausting your day had been. I only nodded in agreement... my, it certainly sounded like you were tired. You kept yawning, didn't you? Surely those lessons hadn't been _that_ tiring, had they...? You couldn't understand it. You'd got plenty of sleep the night before, so you told me... I merely stood up and took my own cup through to the small kitchen area, running it and the spoon beneath the stream of tapwater while I spoke to you. Perhaps you were more tired than you thought... exhaustion had a funny way of just creeping up on the human body sometimes. You didn't answer that. I glanced up and couldn't help but feel that similar rush once more, that kind of petrified exhilaration... when I returned to the sitting room, you'd dropped your empty cup to the floor. You were fallen against the chair, head nestled against the supportive curve, eyes closed and fast asleep. I pretended innocence. I nudged your shoulder and spoke your name and you failed to offer any kind of response. Perhaps you really _were_ exhausted.

I took your cup back and washed it up also. I stood in the kitchen and glanced out of the window... I knew this dangerous. Kudou would be occupied for the rest of the afternoon, but there seemed little to prevent Katsuragi or Moritaka returning back for even a momentary visit... perhaps I should have undertaken this upstairs. Perhaps I should have chosen a quieter venue. Perhaps you might have accepted an invitation to my house if the pretence had been one of study... however, for the moment, it was too late. I had you asleep and I had you alone... it had been months and yet still you haunted me, Takumu. You seemed so able to live on as if nothing had happened and nobody would mention or ask of it because nobody had _known_. Only you and I, and you seemed intent on ignoring it... you would ignore it and I couldn't speak of it. Had all that time between us been but a dream? Had I just imagined it? The only thing that caused me to believe that I hadn't dreamt _you_ was that you lived and breathed in front of me... and yet lived a life so suddenly separate from my own. I needed to remember that it hadn't been false. I needed to feel your warmth and recall your body, the memory had dulled beneath my grieving fingertips and after you, I could never be satisfied of only my own touch. The warmth inside me felt but a shadow imitation of the nervous heat you'd caused. I needed to remember you. The realisation that I could come to forget such things scared me like nothing else. If I couldn't have you, could I not at least keep your memory...?

The worry that I would be caught was pushed aside by the recollection of you laughing with others. With Moritaka. You spent a lot of time with him, didn't you...? You told me that you two had been friends since childhood. I'd always somewhat envied him for that - it seemed somehow unfair that he'd known you for so much longer, that he'd got to know you and see you grow up... sometimes I would fantasize that I had been there also. That our separate childhoods could have run alongside each other and that we could have known each other even then... I'm sure I would have been in awe of you even as a child. I could have watched you, could have tracked your growth from the child you were to the teenager you blossomed into... I would have watched that and felt lucky for having been able to witness such a thing. We would have had photos from our youth - perhaps from school trips, perhaps class photos... we would have looked at them together and laughed at how young we'd all looked then. We would have had shared memories of our old classes, would have been able to recall amusing things and other memories, teachers we'd hated and teachers we'd liked, the little memories that made up an innocent childhood... and yet we didn't meet until we both reached Seirei Gakuen. We should have grown up together, Takumu. We should have had class photos together. The fact that there was so much of your life lived that I could never hope to knew made me feel helpless like nothing else, and knowing that your future no longer included me inside it... that also made me feel hopeless, but somehow determined also. I was petrified but I couldn't let you go...! Surely you could understand something like that...? If there was no room for me in your future, I'd have to _make_ room for me in your future. That was all I could do.

If your fears were of your career, I doubted that you would cause such a similar relationship with Moritaka. However, the way I saw you two together... Moritaka made no hesitation for throwing himself at you, did he? It was bad enough watching him and Kudou act in a similar fashion but when _he_ would touch you, even like that... I felt that I couldn't let him do such a thing. How could I? You had been mine and I had been yours... hadn't you treasured that? I'd treasured you. Didn't you value that you were the only person I let see myself like that...? You were the only person I showed myself to, the only person I was vulnerable for, the only person I blushed at... I realise that, for your touch that seemed experienced against me, I knew nothing of your relationships. Perhaps you'd been with people before, perhaps you were just confident... I didn't know. I didn't particularly want to know. Had I been just one amongst many? Was I but the stepping-stone between one relationship and another? Was I something to be passed by, to be moved on from...?

I do not see you like that, Takumu. You were my first, you may be my last, you were my everything. You still are. I felt so pleasantly involved by you when we were together but once we were apart, oh... nothing grows so ugly as the path of obsession, does it? I wished to have you as I once had, but _more_... I had been yours so completely and I had been foolish enough to believe you mine also. I'd trusted you, but I couldn't trust you now. If I couldn't trust you to obediently sit at my side and proclaim your loyalty then I would have to force such things from you... and if you were one to play so casually with the emotions of others, then I wonder if I was mistaken in my original feeling after all.

You overwhelmed me. If I was scared, you held me tight and brushed my fears away... but never did I tell you of my fears where you were the origin. You'd have me panting and desperate and I'd tell you to be more gentle and to make it last... I wanted it to last. Not just any individual experience, but _all_ of it... we lived in the present, we built our past and lay in wait for our future. That was how I saw us. Sometimes I worried, I thought '_this can't last forever_'... but such worries were extinguished when you looked at me, when you _looked_ at me... your eyes were gentle and serious and I would have believed the world was flat if you had told me in such a tone of voice. I worried that we could somehow end and yet I never seriously considered the eventuality when we _would_. Such a thought was a nameless terror I could not face and yet I felt only numbed when you walked away from me.

I suppose I couldn't believe it. I don't think I ever have.

I'd stood in the kitchen for at least ten minutes, I believe. The cups were clean and yet still I washed them and dried them... I did them again and once more, just to be certain. To buy myself time. To give myself the opportunity to stop. To catch the sound of the door opening and of Katsuragi acknowledging us or Moritaka wondering where you were... though, even now it was too late, was it not? Especially if it were Moritaka who came to visit. He'd see you sleeping and try to wake you... he would worry if you did not wake. He'd take you to the nurse's office, would send you under Megumi-sensei's inspection... perhaps you would wake and they would question you. Perhaps it would somehow be obvious that you'd taken sleeping pills. How would such a thing be checked for...? I didn't know, I couldn't know. You would have no memory of it, would I be an immediate suspect?

You were heavier than I expected you to be, but I managed to carry you upstairs. At least up there we were secluded, at least up there I could buy you time before you were discovered. Past the upstairs meeting room and through to the upstairs sitting room... the curtains were drawn and the room was dark. I lay you on the small sofa and debated opening the curtains... I decided against it. I sat opposite you and watched you. I wondered how long the effects of the sleeping pills would last for... minutes? Hours? Days? I realised my thoughts becoming frantic, yet even hours would be conspicuous. We still had time before the school day would end, but if the evening were to approach and you had not yet returned home... my mind raced. I still had your home phone number in my mobile phone... perhaps I could have contacted your parents and told them you fell asleep in school - and such a thing would not have been a lie, yet...

Yet we were now alone. I was the only one in your presence and, in your sleeping innocence, you weren't arguing. You didn't mind that I was here. You didn't mind me watching you. In a strange way, this was comforting... I never stopped finding you beautiful, yet once you'd finished things, I found you painful to watch. I _wanted_ to watch you, I _wanted_ to look at you... I'd felt embarrassed when you knew I was looking at you, though you never minded. You found it flattering that I found you so attractive. I found it stranger that you found me attractive in turn. Compared to you--... I-... I couldn't understand how anything in this world could be considered beautiful past you. You were perfect, always perfect. Perfect in my mind, perfect in my memory, perfect while sleeping in front of me. So perfectly unaware. My, you would have sat up quite quickly had you known my plans... yet even I had been in two minds about what I wished to do.

If I could not have you willingly, then I would take you without choice. You were asleep. You had no question, no say in the matter. All of the times we had _been_ together blurred and crossed in my memory and I could not remember a specific number for the amount of times you'd taken me. I liked it. No, more than that... I craved it, treasured it, bathed in it, _yearned_ for it. You never did ask me to take you. I often wondered how I would have reacted had you asked... and yet now I was taking the matter into my own hands, so to speak. You would not have me and so I would take you. I would create new experience of your warmth and feel the touch of memory light beneath my fingers. I would _remember_. Surely you could not blame me, Takumu...! Such a thing was but revision in my constant study of _you_... I had told you I was yours and you accepted it. You accepted me. I was yours yet didn't you realise that part of the process of my becoming yours was that you became mine also...?! I would not have trusted you had I not considered you entirely mine. Everything about you, I could access. Your feeling and emotion, your touch and your kiss... your past and your future, your memory and your trust... everything. Everything, Takumu. These were all of the things I gave to you, though mere words do not do them justice. I opened myself to you, I laid myself bare beneath you... was this not what it was like for you? Was I in fact alone in what I experienced? Perhaps I fell too far too quickly, yet for you I couldn't help it. You shone so brightly I feared you would burn me and yet trusted you not to. You brought me close with kindness and then stole it away when I was too taken to do anything about it. It took me too long to accept your feeling and I fear that the betrayal of that acceptance may leave me unwilling... and yet who should I be willing for? Not you, for you betrayed me. Yet, anybody else... nobody else is you, Takumu. For that they fail to match your beauty and perfection for existence, I could not allow myself...

You trapped me, Takumu. I refused to move on and I felt _unable_ to move on... I didn't _want_ anybody but you, I _couldn't_ want anybody but you--! Couldn't you understand...!?

I undressed you slowly. A single shard of sunlight shone bright and harsh between the curtains as I revelled in the soft sound of cloth and fabric against your body. I remembered when you'd told me my behaviour was unhealthy. I hadn't understood you at that time but as I picked each button of your blazer and pulled it gently open, I smiled and supposed I could see your point of view. This wasn't healthy, was it? I didn't care. I didn't _want_ healthy, only you. Only you, Takumu. Nothing else was important.

You lay unmoving as I undressed you. You breathed and that was all. There was a time long past when you would have been impatient for this, when you would have told me to hurry up as I fumbled with your clothing... I could take my time, now. I could feel a warmth against your undershirt and I felt such yearning for it... that warmth was _you_, Takumu. Once again I would be able to feel that sensation and my body felt nervous for the slowly-waking memories. I unbuttoned your shirt and parted it, I pressed my face to your neck and inhaled deeply. _You_. I felt your hair tickle against my skin... I straddled you on the sofa and pressed my face there instead, threading my fingers through your hair and delighting at its touch. I missed such things so keenly and I hurt, I hurt to remember them and I hurt at the knowledge that there would be no reprise... yet here you were beneath me and I could do as I wished. You looked so peaceful as you slept. I moved away and lifted you, I took your blazer and your shirt and I folded them neatly before placing them on the carpet.

I looked at your body. I pressed my hands to your chest. I could feel your nipples beneath my palms and I moved to stroke them with my fingers. You barely reacted and that twitch could have been anything. Your lack of reaction displeased and comforted me both at once; I wanted to hear you moan as you once had, I wanted your breath to catch on my name and for that to make me _shudder_... but for this, there would have to be such sacrifices. I could only have you like this and to have you like this meant that I could not have you like _that_. You left me with nothing, so I felt accomplished for having the forthright manner to settle for this; if this was the only way I could have you, then perhaps that couldn't be helped...

For all of the dissatisfaction I had with the situation, your skin was still warm. My hands were sat on your chest and I could feel you breathing. I could feel your heartbeat. How many nights had we lain together, you holding me against you and my head against your chest? My ear pressed against your skin and guided to peaceful sleep by the simple comforting rhythm of your heartbeat. That sound was evidence that you were alive and I loved to listen to it. I was tempted to do so again, but now was not the time... such a thing was an exercise in lethargy and I felt I had not the time to spend on such things quite yet. Instead, I moved back once more and dragged my hands against your skin until I felt the contrast of your trousers against your skin. How I envied such garments for their job. I would have wrapped around you and warmed you and covered you so if you'd wished me, if you'd let me... why did such inanimate objects have such trust? If I could have been but one thread on your body to be near you, I would have been happy.

Your socks and your trousers and your boxers... all were removed and folded and placed to the side. You lay beneath me, naked. Ah, you were vulnerable now, were you not? I could have done anything to you.

I _was_ going to do anything to you. Anything I could.

I felt transfixed. I could do nothing but stare at you.

I had known your body so well, had I not...? I touched you and was reminded, I savoured your gentle warmth and I leant down and kissed you and the taste of your skin was no different to my memory. Perhaps there were hours until you would wake, but suddenly that didn't seem long enough... months and years were not enough to learn of you and _know_ you as I wished to. I wanted to know everything about you, I wanted to feel everything...

You were still so beautiful. I couldn't understand how you could remain so beautiful.

You were so peaceful and so innocent and my confusion was not yet so that I wished to break that. To do that... to do to you as I wished would have been to hurt you, would it not? Even if you were somehow to not realise... no, you _would_ realise. There would be that certain pain, would there not? If I were to mark your body at all... anything would leave reminder on or inside you that I had _been_ there. You were private territory now and I was trespassing.

You had hurt me, it felt like you'd wounded me and that I wouldn't, simply _couldn't_ heal... and yet for all that you had hurt me, I just couldn't do it. I lay with you naked beneath me, but I couldn't hurt you. Part of me wished for you to feel as much pain as I had, I wanted to know I could move you as you _still_ moved me... but more than that, I just wished to regain what we once had. I didn't want there to be pain, I didn't want us to hurt each other, I just wanted _you_. I loved you, Takumu. I loved you too much to do something unforgivable like that to you. I clothed you once more and took you back downstairs. I stayed with you until you woke up, which you eventually did early on in the evening. You seemed confused... I said that you'd fallen asleep and that I'd been taking care of homework notes. There was no suspicion in your expression, you believed me. You went home after that, I let you go with nothing further said. You didn't have to know what I'd been thinking and, for once, I didn't want you to.

That first time I gave you sleeping pills, I simply found that I couldn't manage it.

The second time... I didn't hesitate.

~_fin_~


End file.
